Shattered Sunlight
by verity candor
Summary: It will always be her flaming hair haunting you, and if she's gone in your memories, she's smiling in your dreams. An older, grimmer Harry runs from sunlight and the past he left behind. T for not-at-all explicit sex.


_Shattered Sunlight_

The sun crowns over the rim of horizon, breaking open the night and sending half-awake tendrils of sunlight thrusting through your cracked window. The light is eager and unremitting, breaking into the sanctuary of your closed eyelids, even though you just want to sleep for a while - longer.

As always, someone is next to you, as always, she sleeps through the morning's assault on you, and, as always, you can't quite remember her name.

You're in Venice today (and yesterday) - lost somewhere in the beautiful sun-drenched stone and sea of it.

And even if you're hollow inside, at least your bed is warm today, at least, at least, it's not all dark for the few moments that someone's there, and -

It's the endless orange of it. Slanting until everything around you is the same rose gold. Unaccountably, damnably beautiful. It's always like that. No matter where you go.

But Venice is best - something about the fragile decay of it - barely hiding the fact that it's drowning and broken. Always that same promise in the sunlight, like it's smiling bravely as it prepares to die.

But then, you already know how that looks. You always will.

_You can't - You can't do anything. It'stoola- ate. You - great... heroic prat._

"Enjoy your time, Signore."

The hotel manager sees you out rather happily, his round cheeks ruddy in the morning light, pudgy fingers leaving sweaty fingerprints on the glass doors.

_It's not your fau-_

How long have you hated the sunlight?

_- can't do anything._

Ron and Hermione have sent you another owl telling you to come home, to come back to England, and stop running away to a new place. Move on. Learn to live again.

_Please __don't-_

_-She wouldn't want-_

She wanted to come to Europe afterwards. That's what she told him.

_-blame yourself-_

The streets are cracked but solid, pounded into flat indifference by thousands of feet, marching ceaselessly into the distance-

You stroll casually into the nearest bar. You've walked long enough that even the shadows are a little bit seedy, and the sunlight on the streets is twilight, as dimmed and faded as the shop windows you skirt around.

_Don't you get it? It's not- I can't- How many times will it be this? How many times can they die? How - ?_

The lights are on in the bar, and the girl in the corner - all tanned honey from her eyes to her hair to her leathery shoes, shoots you a sly, slip-sliding look that tickles the side of your face.

_Oh _Merlin_, do I_ look _like one of those doe-eyed, flouncy types to you?_

The lamps cast a rosy aura on her face as she comes toward you. You know what will happen, as you have since before you walked in.

_Ginny._

"Chiara."

_The last seconds-_

_flurried images-_

_the red of her hair-_

_of blood-_

_nono,please,please,please - _

_Ginny,please,don't no please._

You throw yourself at her almost before she's done speaking, and beneath her dark, thick lashes she is surprised and grateful.

_Please, please no-_

'Si - Si, Si!' She cries in a half yell, pressed up against you - And you're talking too, "You're so beautiful, so fucking beautiful. Please, so - ughh, beautiful."

You might be moaning it, or singing it - she is (but they all are).

You search out those perfect faces so that you can look at them and see that perfection, not see that they are broken beneath you (but they all are) - You see that, and you know it (knew it, since that broken face, broken heart has been you for longer, and whenever you look in the mirror, you're always trying not to see the cracks in that face everyone else thinks is so perfect-)

"Si... bene, bene, molto bene! Siii..." she sighes.

They _can't _heal you.

If you were someone else, anyone else, You'd know how hopeless it all was - have learned that no matter where you go, you're always going to be

_too late, so close, if only,_

_please, please_

alone.

You'd have learned it was gone (you were gone)

But you don't learn, you don't try. You walk the same road hundreds of time, hoping that someone else will find you the puzzle pieces you have misplaced and put you back together while you're trying to stay broken - for her sake.

And you will still not realize it's too late to get back what you had, what you missed - still not knowing she (you) is so far beyond repair this time.

"Ahh...Buona sera, caro mia."

Oh... it will always be her flaming hair haunting you, and if she's gone in your memories, she's smiling in your dreams. You try frantically to hold on to the jagged edges of the past you can only see in the moonlight, and flee the harsh sunlight, and-

"Buongiorno... buongiorno, amore."

And all you will have left in your palms are last night's broken dreams and this pale-eyed morning's shattered sunlight.


End file.
